Employees Gamble at Work? You Bet!

Not surprisingly, Vault’s 2006 Office Betting Pools
Survey found that the Super Bowl and the NFL regular season
remain the most popular events for workplace pools,
according to a news release.
Sixty-five percent of those who participate in betting
pools said they take part in the Superbowl pool and 61%
said they take part in NFL regular season pools.

The next most popular betting pool was for March
Madness, with 57% of those who take place in office betting
pools participating, the release said.
Other popular pools were pregnancy pools (19%), the Oscars
(13%) and reality shows (12%).

Some unusual office betting pools the survey found
were:

Betting on when an underperforming employee
will be fired,

Betting on when the first day of snow will
occur, and

Betting on which celebrities were the next
likely to die.

There’s no harm done in gambling at work,
right?
A majority (80.5%) of respondents said employees do not
take the possible illegality of pools seriously at all, and
productivity is generally not suffering because of betting
pools since 73.5% of pool participants spend only 5-10
minutes at the office making their picks and save further
research to do at home.
The survey of 328 employees across the US found that most
companies (86%) do not have any company policy against
betting pools that survey respondents are aware of.